


Blossoms in red

by natashawitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cutting, Depression, Hurt Dean Winchester, Self-Harm, Slash goggles for final chapter, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:59:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natashawitch/pseuds/natashawitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of those seven times Dean Winchester cut himself and one time he didn't fics</p><p>I've set a challenge to myself to write 200 words or less per chapter.</p><p>Please heed the warning tags, this could be triggering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stanford Era

**Author's Note:**

> Supernatural is not mine. No copyright infringement intended.
> 
> Just playing in the SPN sandbox, in a angst fashion.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

It was a simple motion, unwrapping the paper around the razor blade, holding it between his thumb and finger, gazing at the shining edge under the fluorescent light of the crumbling motel bathroom.

Sam was gone.

For an instant Dean looked at the blue veins on the inside of his wrist. If he cut lengthways he’d be closer to finality.

Dad was awake now, stumbling around their shitty room, lost in the drunken rage that had beset him since Dean dropped Sammy at the bus stop.

The last punch had fractured Dean’s cheekbone.

He couldn’t do it to his Dad. Have John find his eldest bleeding out on a cracked tiled floor.

Not to Sammy either, starting his new normal life. He didn’t deserve the burden of a dead brother. He hadn’t wanted the burden of Dean.

Dean shook his head, clearing water from his eyes.

Sam’s deadbeat useless brother. Not good enough to stay for. Never good enough.

The razor cut a bright red line dragging through the skin on the inside of his left thigh.

Sharp bright pain caught Dean’s breath and stole it.

He could feel this.

He felt.

He was human.

He could carry on.


	2. Asylum

Ten hours out from Rockford Illinois.

All he wanted to do was sleep for a week.

Chills moved through him but he wasn’t ill.

The skin on his face was too tight, too dry. He scrubbed a hand over it. He wanted to cut there, wet his cheeks in red. But he wouldn’t. Too hard to explain.

Sam wasn’t alright. He’d wanted to talk about it. How guilty he felt for pulling the trigger. How to sugar coat the harsh truths, take them back, wind back time and tell Dean lies about how he didn’t really think his big brother was pathetic.

No way was Dean talking like a freaking tweenie girl about his feelings. 

Sam asked was Dean good before he left to pick up their take out.

“Peachy.” Dean was a liar.

Three gracious parallel lines.

He had to stop. Sam would not be long.

He knew Sam was going to forget the pie.


	3. Hell

The tip of his smallest blade, the wickedly sharp dagger, dug a hollow into the flesh above Dean’s hip bone.

The circle needed to be perfect.

That accomplished he could expand his slice sideways and up.

Blood didn’t flow. Nothing blossomed here.

Dean looked to Alistair, “Master I am dry.”

“Dry inside, Dean-o. Desiccated. I bled you out, my boy.” Alistair foul sulphurous breath hitched in a rasping cackle.

Dean cringed but continued his work. Master had been displeased with his flaying of the perverted errant priest. 

This was punishment, a lesson, a re-visiting of his master’s work. 

Instead the familiarity of cutting into his own skin stirred something in Dean’s bloodless heart, something of desperate slashes in stinky bedrooms, shallow cuts to recall him from blankness, secret pricks of pins in gas station restrooms, nails gouging scratch marks to his inner arm while Sammy slept in the other bed.

The black ring in Dean’s green pupils narrowed and Alistair lost ground.


	4. Cheyenne

Apocalypse starter.

First Seal Breaker.

Everyone they had saved. All the monsters he’d hunted. All the families who slept easy now. They were all headed for blood and guts Armageddon, because Dean Freaking Winchester was weak.

If he had a knife he would cut deep and hard.

He had a paperclip from his medical file.

Sam had gone to the motel for a shower. Castiel had fluttered away.

Dean uncoiled the clip. Not for handcuff Houdini this time.

Under his arm, in the pit, where nosy nurses wouldn’t see.

It scalded: appropriate for a soul that should still be on the rack.

Castiel once said he could send him back. 

Castiel said God had work for him.

Angels were dicks. He wouldn’t trust them to watch over a lab rat.

What Sam had to do to save him…. unthinkable.

Protect Sammy. Save people. Hunt monsters. Be a good soldier.

Epic failure.

Epic, cosmic, end of the world fail.

The warm blood trickled from his armpit. He pulled out the paperclip and bunched in some tissues from beside his bed. Frigging Princess Samantha had been using them to wipe his puppy eyes.

Time lingered in the too bright hospital room.  
 


	5. After Stull

Lisa’s fist banged the door.

“Dean Winchester you get your butt out here.” It was her telling-Ben-off voice. “You’d better not be drinking in there.”

Dean held his flask and the vegetable paring knife.

He didn’t purposely ignore, deafened by blood pounding in his ears.

He had spent eight hours erecting siding, come home, cooked mac’n’cheese, drank a few beers, and zoned out in front of the TV.

Ben asleep, Lisa had thrown her legs across his lap and smiled suggestively. Dean had frozen.

Nothing different. Nothing special. No sacred anniversary. Bobby hadn’t called. He hadn’t pulled the tarp back on the Impala and run his hands over her black metal skin.

His blood was ice. He needed to see if he still bled red, to feel the sharp grounding pain of knife through skin.

All his precious marching lines of scars were gone. The neat regimental pattern along his thighs had disappeared in Stull when Castiel had healed him into a new improved Dean, minus battle wounds and handprint, and the heart that had followed Sam into Hell.

Dean inhaled, continuing to live, as promised.

A petal of blood birthed on his new unmarked skin.

“One,” Dean whispered.


	6. Indiana

“Call me back, 755551028” Dean threw his phone across the table for the umpteenth time. He caught his hair with his fist and tugged sharp.

Can’t help Sam. Sam wouldn’t help himself, said he was too tired, that Dean should have known the consequences of re-souling his brother.

Dean slammed his hand down onto the low table, rocking it.

Can’t bring Bobby back.

Can’t drive Baby.

Can’t find an open liquor store at this hour.

Can’t kill Dick Roman.

Can’t be a Dad to an Amazon kid right.

Can’t breathe.

Can’t get Lucifer out of Sam’s head.

Can’t find someone to fix Sammy.

Dean buried his nose into the dumb stupid trench coat.

He hadn’t cut for months, barely holding it together. Staying strong for Sam, trying to be his rock. Putting the fake smile on like Frank had advised him. He’d found comfort in the bottom of a bottle. 

That just wasn’t cutting it now. 

\- Ha Ha, cutting, Dean you’re hilarious.

His machete was on the table. He’d never used a knife so big. 

It made a pretty red line on his belly and gifted a spike of pain.

“Sorry Cas.”

He’d gotten blood on the coat lining.


	7. Purgatory

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

“You shouldn’t do that Sugar.”

Dean looked back through the ever present gloom at Benny who was braced between two tree trunks.

He lowered his filthy shirts and shrugged at the vampire. What did he care? Unless the blood was baiting him. 

Before Benny, when he was alone, calling for Castiel, waiting for a fantasized blinding dimensional rip and Sam’s arm reaching through in rescue, fighting every moment, he'd had no emotions, mechanical in his survival. Now he had Benny and time moved indelible in its passing. Dean needed to hold on, to find Cas, to make the portal, to get them out of here. 

“Your human scent will draw them to us.” The Southern drawl soothed Dean’s nerves. 

He closed his eyes for a second and pressed the filthy undershirt onto the seeping cut. He needed to get lost in the purity of battle. 

Benny was watching him.

“Better get moving then.” Dean set his shoulders and marched in the direction he figured was north-east.

“We’ll find your angel, brother.”

“Damn right.” Dean answered. He felt better already. The cut itched and stung as he walked reminding him that not everything in purgatory was bland and wasted.


	8. Mens of Letters Bunker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are welcome to read this chapter with whatever goggles you prefer.
> 
> Options are:  
> Wincest or brotherly love  
> Destiel or Cas & Dean bromance

.

A hand covered his own, lowering the razor and plucking it from between his fingers.

Dean looked up.

Tears poured down cheeks from eyes that he never wanted to make cry.

“Why Dean?”

This corner of the bunker was meant to be hidden, unused by anyone except Dean. For this. When he needed it.

He lowered his head, ashamed that his weakness had finally been discovered.

“One day you could cut too deep.”

Dean shrugged. His life would end one day on a hunt, or with a blade in his hand. The light at the end of Dean’s tunnel would only be an oncoming train.

“Please Dean.”

Dean heard the plea. It curled around his heart offering the wrong kind of pain.

“Sometimes…” Dean paused to lick his lower lip, “It’s too much.”

“Talk to me.”

Dean nodded his silent future agreement.

Everything was different now.

He could try that.

The razor blade disappeared into a pocket. Warm fingers stroked his cheek. He leaned into the touch, his damp breath ghosting over the other’s palm. 

Open-hearted care, much longed for, permission given, freely exchanged.

A hand was offered. Dean took it.


End file.
